From f97d5c327538a8fe8580fa4dd9ee22c213780a59 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: "Adam Perry @ OpenAI" <anp@openai.com>
Date: Thu, 4 Jun 2026 13:07:53 -0700
Subject: [PATCH] build: use ThinLTO for release binaries (#23710)

## Why

Fat LTO makes release builds substantially slower without providing
enough measured runtime benefit to justify the release CI long pole. The
build-profile investigation found that keeping Cargo's default release
`opt-level=3` and switching from fat LTO to ThinLTO (`3/thin/1`) reduced
a clean `codex-cli` release build from 2073.893 seconds to 1243.172
seconds, a 40.06% improvement.

The resulting binary increased from 196.7 MiB to 211.8 MiB (+7.63%).
Measured runtime changes were small: the worst image workload median was
+0.86% and app-server startup was +0.31% relative to fat LTO. ThinLTO
retains cross-crate optimization while avoiding most of the fat-LTO
build cost.

This deliberately avoids global size optimization: final-executable
testing showed a substantial regression on the image request path, which
is expected to become more important as image usage grows.

## What changed

- Set the workspace release profile to `lto = "thin"`, retaining Cargo's
default release `opt-level=3`.
- Remove release and CI workflow-specific LTO overrides so
release-profile builds consistently use the workspace setting.
- Remove the now-unused Windows release workflow input and related
diagnostic output.

## Validation

- Confirmed the release profile parses with `cargo metadata --no-deps
--format-version 1`.
- CI validates release builds across the supported target matrix.
---
 .github/workflows/rust-ci-full.yml         |  2 --
 .github/workflows/rust-release-windows.yml | 11 ++---------
 .github/workflows/rust-release.yml         |  6 ------
 codex-rs/Cargo.toml                        |  2 +-
 4 files changed, 3 insertions(+), 18 deletions(-)

diff --git a/.github/workflows/rust-ci-full.yml b/.github/workflows/rust-ci-full.yml
index 60d508b21..50ecf2f8d 100644
--- a/.github/workflows/rust-ci-full.yml
+++ b/.github/workflows/rust-ci-full.yml
@@ -167,8 +167,6 @@ jobs:
       USE_SCCACHE: ${{ (startsWith(matrix.runner, 'windows') || (matrix.runner == 'macos-15-xlarge' && matrix.target == 'x86_64-apple-darwin')) && 'false' || 'true' }}
       CARGO_INCREMENTAL: "0"
       SCCACHE_CACHE_SIZE: 10G
-      # In rust-ci, representative release-profile checks use thin LTO for faster feedback.
-      CARGO_PROFILE_RELEASE_LTO: ${{ matrix.profile == 'release' && 'thin' || 'fat' }}
 
     strategy:
       fail-fast: false
diff --git a/.github/workflows/rust-release-windows.yml b/.github/workflows/rust-release-windows.yml
index b4c2b84c0..14d38b9db 100644
--- a/.github/workflows/rust-release-windows.yml
+++ b/.github/workflows/rust-release-windows.yml
@@ -2,10 +2,6 @@ name: rust-release-windows
 
 on:
   workflow_call:
-    inputs:
-      release-lto:
-        required: true
-        type: string
 
 # Cargo's libgit2 transport has been flaky when fetching git dependencies with
 # nested submodules. Prefer the system git CLI across every Cargo invocation.
@@ -16,17 +12,14 @@ jobs:
   build-windows-binaries:
     name: Build Windows binaries - ${{ matrix.runner }} - ${{ matrix.target }} - ${{ matrix.bundle }}
     runs-on: ${{ matrix.runs_on }}
-    # Windows release builds can exceed an hour on fat-LTO mainline releases,
-    # so keep the timeout aligned with the top-level release build headroom.
+    # Windows release builds can exceed an hour, so keep the timeout aligned
+    # with the top-level release build headroom.
     timeout-minutes: 90
     permissions:
       contents: read
     defaults:
       run:
         working-directory: codex-rs
-    env:
-      CARGO_PROFILE_RELEASE_LTO: ${{ inputs.release-lto }}
-
     strategy:
       fail-fast: false
       matrix:
diff --git a/.github/workflows/rust-release.yml b/.github/workflows/rust-release.yml
index 5e3b263ed..2888ea6ce 100644
--- a/.github/workflows/rust-release.yml
+++ b/.github/workflows/rust-release.yml
@@ -149,9 +149,6 @@ jobs:
       run:
         working-directory: codex-rs
     env:
-      # 2026-03-04: temporarily change releases to use thin LTO because
-      # Ubuntu ARM is timing out at 60 minutes.
-      CARGO_PROFILE_RELEASE_LTO: ${{ contains(github.ref_name, '-alpha') && 'thin' || 'thin' }}
       # Use the git CLI instead of Cargo's libgit2 path for git dependencies.
       # macOS release runners have intermittently failed to fetch nested
       # submodules through SecureTransport/libgit2, especially libwebrtc's
@@ -325,7 +322,6 @@ jobs:
           for binary in ${{ matrix.binaries }}; do
             build_args+=(--bin "$binary")
           done
-          echo "CARGO_PROFILE_RELEASE_LTO: ${CARGO_PROFILE_RELEASE_LTO}"
           cargo build --target "$target" --release --timings "${build_args[@]}"
 
       - name: Upload Cargo timings
@@ -1330,8 +1326,6 @@ jobs:
     if: ${{ github.event_name != 'workflow_dispatch' || inputs.release_mode == 'build_unsigned' }}
     needs: tag-check
     uses: ./.github/workflows/rust-release-windows.yml
-    with:
-      release-lto: ${{ contains(github.ref_name, '-alpha') && 'thin' || 'fat' }}
     secrets: inherit
 
   argument-comment-lint-release-assets:
diff --git a/codex-rs/Cargo.toml b/codex-rs/Cargo.toml
index 15e0e2c01..5d6d11604 100644
--- a/codex-rs/Cargo.toml
+++ b/codex-rs/Cargo.toml
@@ -501,7 +501,7 @@ debug = "none"
 strip = "symbols"
 
 [profile.release]
-lto = "fat"
+lto = "thin"
 split-debuginfo = "off"
 # Because we bundle some of these executables with the TypeScript CLI, we
 # remove everything to make the binary as small as possible.